Smash Pre-Testing

An afternoon of light tests, but more importantly splash and shatter preparation. How to position flashes and the camera such that they’re out of harm’s way, whilst ensuring the necessary containment of liquid and shard.

Let me explain. This bottle is resting on a great big piston, weighs about twenty pounds, and it’s harder than granite. Maybe. Perhaps nearly equivalent. Hard enough that a glass bottle like this won’t need to fall far to erupt into a million pieces.

And so the final desired result is this shot (but with different lighting), catching the bottle in the instant after its glass has fractured and contents have begun to spill all about. Without deleterious effects to the small bedroom space in which it’ll occur. No errant glass pieces strewn about, no beer soaked hardwood floors, no black plastic/metal camera gear submerged.